


Play

by storiesfortravellers



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Edgeplay, M/M, Memories, Painplay, Slash, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-06
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:58:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles/Erik and their telepathic version of emotional painplay. Each man thinks about why they like it, and what they think about their partner. Written for Ash for the prompt "sparkle."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ashcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashcat/gifts).



Erik liked edgeplay. Their specific brand of it involved Erik lying completely still. He stared at the ceiling until the intrusion made him shut his eyes - not that it did any good, provided any shelter.

The game was this: Charles would reach into him, would touch something raw. He would follow the fear, intentionally heading for the splintery ends of Erik's mind that flinched from Charles' reach.

Charles would press on Erik's most fragile parts, and all the synapses around it would light up. Memories and fears and needs and other wordless, hopeless things, things that wouldn't be fit for gutters or dreams.

Erik was surprised the first time that Charles was able to go through with it, that he was willing to do this for Erik (to Erik). Eventually he figured out that Charles' hope and kindness were not signs of softness or even gentleness, and they were certainly not an unwillingness to be cruel.

Charles simply decided long ago that hope would be his weapon, and then for years (just as Erik had) Charles had honed it. Erik, against his will, cherished this about him.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Erik never ceased to surprise him. It's not something Charles would have thought of, their play, their game, but it wasn't something he was averse to either.

He liked touching people's pain.

Pain was truthful; it wasn't ego or greed or any of the usual things that drove people. It was just there, sparkling like sharpened glass amid the worries and strategizing and business of everyday life. It was what made people who they were, what made an individual nothing like anyone else.

Joy is easily translated. But pain is utterly specific, and no one can know someone else's pain. Not really, not in all its borders and faultlines and hues.

Almost no one.

The first time they tried it, Charles was worried. Not about Erik - Charles could always force his mind to calm itself, to forget, if absolutely necessary - though it turned out that Erik could handle the things his mind had tried to hide, and never needed more than a night of being cared for by Charles, his close contact, a few distracting droll remarks, and no demands or pity or judgment. But Charles wondered at first what Erik would think of him, of his willingness - and then his eagerness - to rifle through the shredded seams of Erik's psyche. It turned out he was wrong to worry (and he was so often wrong about Erik, he should really learn not to assume). Erik never thought Charles was awful for what he liked (for who he was). And if Erik was afraid that Charles would think less of him, or that Charles would be dismayed by what he found, Charles never picked up on it. The trust was overwhelming, and Charles wondered why he himself didn't find it a bit disconcerting. He wondered if his ego were so large that he just gladly accepted it when Erik offered his mind up on platter, as if Charles assumed it should be his to play with all along.

Not that he took the responsibility lightly. Erik's mind was a labyrinth, that was true. And Erik thought of himself as the monster at the center of it -- he just didn't think there was anything wrong with being a monster. Charles knew this.

He also knew that Erik was wrong. There was no monster at the center. Mostly because there was no center at all. There's no entrance or exit or middle or margin to one's mind. Charles had been amid the sharp corners and swerving overlap of branches that saturated Erik's mind, and if there was a monster there (and Charles knew there might be), the monster was the maze itself. Its astounding scale, its sheer complexity and number of twists, its invogorating and unlikely pathways. Every one of them laced with the dim aching glow of Erik's past, Erik's heart, and Erik's pain.

There would be no saving Erik, Charles knew, not in the conventional sense, the sense that people mean when they talk about needing to be saved from oneself. People think you can kill off the bad half and then the good half will emerge stronger than ever. But Charles didn't think that. From what he saw, imperfect though his knowledge was, it would be like trying to untangle the footpath from the walls, the straight lines from the curves, heat from light. Such a thing would be impossible. And if possible, tragic, like burning a work of art, like cutting an animal in two.

Certainly, he wouldn't say this. Charles would tell Erik that there was good and bad in him, that he had both in extraordinary measure. This would help Erik, and it was not untrue. But he had no way of explaining that a mind, a moral being, is not a scale with good on one side and bad on the other. The deeper you go into someone's mind, someone's pain, the less you see these as different hues. The more you see them as a single beast with two reflections, bouncing in different directions as each is shone on from a different source of light. Charles saw, long before he was forced to admit it, that with Erik - with anyone perhaps, but certainly with Erik - there would be no way to make him choose the kind of man he wants to be. There would be no decisive victory, no wiping out of the parts of Erik that were deemed the enemy. There would only be small victories, moments of decision that Charles might be able to sway one way or the other. Mere pieces of a moral being, a paltry trail of string or breadcrumbs, the barest amount needed for a man of hope to follow. But he would follow anyway. He would follow that string, feeling its roughness, its fragility in the dark, trying not to get lost, trying not to get stuck in a maze.


End file.
